Sense of passion

Italian-born food expert has made it her mission to teach people the ways of her old country

Orietta Gianjorio stood in front of a dozen people at the first of seven classes she's teaching at Hutchins Street Square in Lodi and guided them through the label on a bottle of California-made olive oil.

Orietta Gianjorio stood in front of a dozen people at the first of seven classes she's teaching at Hutchins Street Square in Lodi and guided them through the label on a bottle of California-made olive oil.

"The back of the label, one thing where Americans concentrate their attention, is the calorie count and nutritional value. For me that should disappear from the face of the earth," said the Italian-born Gianjorio.

Although she recently became a naturalized citizen of the country to which she moved four years ago when she married an American, Gianjorio's mission is to teach people the ways of her old country. At least in the kitchen.

"I miss the approach to food as a pleasure," Gianjorio said. "Numbers are not pleasure. I'm looking at taste. We need to (stop) looking at food in such an un-passionate, sterile way. ... I'm here to make people understand eating and tasting is about giving pleasure, and being healthy by giving pleasure to yourself."

Gianjorio's enthusiasm is infectious. She prompted her students into taking sips of olive oil, swirling it around in their mouths and swallowing it.

She had to encourage them a bit, but she's living proof it wouldn't hurt anyone to test the oil.

She does it all the time as a certified member of the UC Davis Olive Oil Taste Panel.

A journalism graduate of Rome University, Gianjorio was writing a story for a Rome magazine about the olive oil industry in this country and visited UC Davis Olive Center. While there, Gianjorio, who has a diploma from the Italian Sommeliers Association, making her a trained wine professional, was invited to become a taster.

"One important factor was that my senses were already trained on wines," Gianjorio explained. "It's easy to switch to olive oil once your senses are on alert.

"Food and wine were always my hobby. My grandfather used to produce wine. He always had me taste, and I was introduced at a young age to cooking by my mom. I went to the sommelier association for fun. When I moved here I realized people are so curious about food and wine."

The curiosity, though, is always about recipes, Gianjorio found. And calories. And diets.

"Cooking and tasting is not about recipes. It's more than just that. You can't just look in terms of a numeric equation, how many grams of fat is in a tablespoon of this or calories in teaspoon of that."

A hand-made meal can't be quantified. It's an act of love, and it didn't start by putting the first ingredient listed on an index card into a bowl. Gianjorio is teaching this idea to American audiences, first on television segments - at San Francisco's KRON4 and other network affiliates - and now at Hutchins Street Square.

"My cooking classes are not so much for cooking, but so we can cook something and taste what we have cooked," she said. "It addresses cooking with a recipe, but beginning with ingredients and how we put them together, followed by food tasting and food and wine pairing. Cooking is an overall experience."

When she holds her next class - Making Real Bolognese Ragu - at Hutchins Street Square on Saturday, the emphasis won't be on some Italian recipe handed down for generations. The focus will be on stimulating the senses - touch, scent and vision - throughout the process.

"I really like everything to be fresh," Gianjorio said. "It's so important. What we eat is something that is part of us. It gives you a different passion if you think about it that way. I hear a lot of people around here talk about diets and calories and nutritional values. Even people who aren't on a diet will tell me a banana is good for you because it has potassium. Who cares? It's good for you because it has a sweet taste that you need when your taste buds have a desire for something sweet. Oranges are good for you because they have a sour taste. We should eat in terms of colors, aromas, flavors and touch. If you're thinking of a banana as points or potassium or calories, you're not on a path to being healthy."

Cooking should be an adventure, shared with loved ones, Gianjorio said, not a circus act so often seen in cooking shows on television. Those programs may be entertaining, but the recipes too often call for ingredients the average cook is unfamiliar with or isn't likely to find.

Simple ingredients can be just as effective. Like olive oil.

Gianjorio whipped through a PowerPoint presentation on how olive oil is made one Friday night last month. She explained that, unlike wine, oil doesn't improve with age. Oxidation and light are its enemies. With so many California companies now producing it, Gianjorio said she doesn't have a single bottle of the nectar from her homeland in her kitchen.

She led her class through the tasting process, teaching students to smell for grass, tomatoes, leaves, artichokes, eucalyptus, apples, peaches, tropical fruits and other green scents as opposed to unpleasant smells like gym clothes, manure, the sewer, paint, nail polish, cardboard, stale walnuts, and play-dough, which indicate oil has gone bad. The flavor could be bitter, sweet or sour, and the texture should be astringent, not greasy.

Three California oils met the standards for extra virgin olive oil, meaning it contained nothing but oil from olives and was not subjected to excessive heat in the making. A fourth sample, whicht was rancid, was a popular brand sold in grocery stores that Gianjorio had purchased that day. It was among several brands sold in the U.S. that the UC Davis panel determined in 2010 were fraudulently labeled extra virgin olive oil.

"I'm going to go home and throw out my olive oil," said Brian Barr, of Stockton, who took the class to improve the cooking he does for his family "You can't cook without knowing what products to use. I've always liked to cook."

Gianjorio wants cooking - and the final product - to be even more enjoyable.